The Georgia Supreme Court on Tuesday denied William Earl Lynd’s request for a stay of execution, paving the way for him to become the first inmate in the nation to face execution since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that lethal injection is constitutional.

Lynd is scheduled to die at 7 p.m. He was convicted of kidnapping and killing his live-in girlfriend, 26-year-old Ginger Moore, shooting her three times in the face and head nearly 20 years ago.

The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles also rejected Lynd’s bid for clemency. Lynd’s lawyer, Tom Dunn, had asked Georgia’s top court to grant a stay so it could consider new forensic evidence. The court was unanimous in rejecting Lynd’s appeal. Dunn filed an appeal Tuesday afternoon with the U.S. Supreme Court.

Lynd would be the first prisoner executed since September, when the high court took up a challenge to lethal injection and effectively halted all executions nationwide for seven months.

Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue said Tuesday that the U.S. Supreme Court made the right decision on lethal injection but said the state had not rushed to be the first out of the gate.

“It was not something we wanted to necessarily be first at. It was just the fact that this had been there,” Perdue said at a state Capitol news conference.

The Supreme Court ruled last month in a Kentucky case that the state’s method of executing inmates with a three-drug cocktail did not violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Roughly three dozen states, including Georgia, use a similar method.

Soon after the ruling, prosecutors in several of those states quickly moved to schedule executions that had been delayed as the court reviewed the issue. Besides Georgia, Mississippi on Monday scheduled an execution for later this month, while Texas announced plans to put a Mexican-born prisoner to death in August.

Death penalty opponents planned vigils around Georgia on Tuesday.

“In light of the many well-documented problems with our death penalty system, it is disturbing that Georgia is rushing to lead the country in resuming the death penalty machinery,” said Laura Moye, chairwoman of Georgians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.

Lynd, now 53, was sentenced to die for kidnapping and shooting Moore in south Georgia in 1988, after the two consumed Valium, marijuana and alcohol. Prosecutors said she suffered a slow, agonizing death, regaining consciousness twice after being shot in the head.

Texas carried out the nation’s last execution, putting Michael Richard to death on Sept. 25, 2007, the same day the Supreme Court agreed to consider the Kentucky case. The Kentucky case was brought by two prisoners who claimed the lethal injection method violated the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.